Face-Off
by Barb1
Summary: Liz Parker and Buffy Summers switch bodies and find out the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side.


When Buffy woke she was still teetering on the edge of a dream. As her eyes fluttered open she still felt somehow disembodied—as if caught between the waking world and the sleeping one. She laid in her bed a while longer, with her eyes squeezed shut, trying to get back to it. She couldn't remember any of it but it had been somehow comforting. And Buffy seldom had good dreams so she really wanted to grab a hold of it again. But it was gone and she regretfully opened her eyes. 

She wondered what woke her up. It was still dark and the night was quiet. But ever since she woke up in a coffin she had had difficulty sleeping so she didn't give it much thought. She drew back her sheets and stepped onto the floor. That's when she noticed it. 

The queasy dreamlike feeling came back to her as she looked around the room. It was dark but she could still tell quite clearly that she was not in her own bedroom. 

She whirled around; scanning the room as every "spidey-sense" in her head started tingling. She backed toward the door, and without taking her eyes off of the room, she groped for a light switch. She finally found one and suddenly the room lit up harshly. She resisted the urge to squint and she ran her eyes over every corner of the room. Carefully, she bent down and looked under the bed, finding nothing there she peered into the bathroom. It was empty. 

Buffy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

__

OK, I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation, she thought as she walked around the room carefully, looking for some clue as to where she was. The room did look a little familiar. _Maybe it's something normal—like I got blasted at a frat party and woke up—"_

Then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.

"Liz—" she said with relief, until Liz's mouth moved with Buffy's words. It took a topsy-turvy moment before Buffy fully realized that she was looking in a mirror, and the reflection wasn't her own. Before she realized her voice didn't sound like her own. She walked up to the mirror and put her fingers against the glass. "Of course normal would be too much to ask, wouldn't it?" 

"Hi," a voiced whispered behind her. 

Buffy whirled around and found Max Evans peering in at her from outside her window.

"Max!" she cried. 

He cringed at how loud she said his name and he crawled in the window. 

"Like to live dangerously?" he asked with a grin.

"Max, I am so glad to see you!" Buffy said. 

Max smiled at her.

"The feeling is mutual," he replied and then he leaned down and kissed her. 

******

When Liz woke she was still teetering on the edge of a dream. As her eyes fluttered open she still felt somehow disembodied—as if caught between the waking world and the sleeping one. She was sure that it was a good dream but she couldn't recall any of the details. She sighed with regret. 

She wasn't sure what woke her up. It still seemed like it was the middle of the night and the room was quiet. She decided to get up and get some water. She drew back the sheet and that's when she noticed it. 

She quickly pulled the sheet back over her. Then she reached for the lamp beside her bed and was too befuddled to notice that it wasn't the same lamp that had been there when she went to sleep. She switched it on and the room was flooded with intense light. 

Liz didn't know what horrified her more—the fact that she was naked beneath her sheets or that a vampire was grinning at her from the windowsill. 

******

Buffy knew that she should push Max away, that she shouldn't be kissing her friend's boyfriend, but when he slid his fingertips up her arm, she felt her skin tingle. His lips were so gentle and at the same time possessive. And when she felt his tongue touched hers her entire body quivered. Then it got really exciting. 

Suddenly images were shooting through her mind. Starscapes with planets that glowed like fire, stars that glistened like diamonds on a velvet blanket, colors she never even imagined. She heard herself moan right before Max pulled away from her. He took a step back and he was looking at her like she was (ironically enough) an alien. 

"Max--?"

"Buffy?"

******

"Spike!" Liz cried as she stared at the vampire crouched on the windowsill. 

He cringed and looked over at the door. 

"Like to live dangerously, do you?" He asked. 

Liz scrambled to pull the sheets up to her neck. She looked around frantically for her clothes. She had been wearing her pajamas when she went to bed, hadn't she? She scanned the room for her clothes and then she realized she wasn't in her room. She was somewhere she'd never been before—naked. She looked at Spike, horrified.

The only time she'd ever met him he had picked her up and dived off the roof of a building. He had helped out when they needed him but she still shivered when she remembered the savagery he'd used when he beat up Angel and when he had tried to sink his fangs into her neck. Right now he was approaching the bed with a really scary grin on his face. 

Liz scanned the room for clothes. Clothes of any kind. She wanted to be dressed more then anything in the world at that moment. She backed up, dragging the sheets with her. Spike's expression soured. 

"Oh, the shrinking violet routine again, eh?" He shook his head. "Fine." 

He turned his back to her and Liz spotted a T-shirt on the floor and she dived for it She pulled it over her head and then she looked around desperately for some pants. She saw some and had them half way up her thighs when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Only the half dressed girl with the disheveled blond hair looking like a deer caught in headlights wasn't Liz It was Buffy Summers. 

She turned and looked at Spike.

"What did you do to me?" she said, and realized it wasn't her voice. 

"Nothing—yet," he replied with that same sick grin.

"What's going on?"

They turned and saw a sleepy looking girl with long brown hair standing in the doorway. 

"Dawn," Spike said.

"Dawn?" Liz echoed. Dawn? Buffy's little sister Dawn? 

"We're—" Spike stammered. "We're going out slaying." He made a lame stabbing movement with his hand. "Yeah, we're going out to slay something. Big."

Dawn glanced at Liz, still frozen in mid-dress. Liz yanked the pants up. 

"Slaying," she said. "That's what I do. I slay monsters."

"Can I come with?" Dawn asked eagerly.

"No!" Spike said firmly. "Now run along back to bed and dream about some spindly boy band or something."

"Pppplease," Dawn said and stalked back to her room. 

Spike turned back to Liz. 

"If I know Little Bit she's probably listening at the door," he said. Then louder, he added: "Come on, let's go get that demon."

He started down the hall. Liz felt off balance, like she was caught in a dream. Maybe she was. Maybe none of this was real. She glanced around her as they made their way down the hall. If she was dreaming then her mind's attention to detail was amazing. She stopped at a picture that was on the wall. It was Buffy, Dawn and a blond woman that Liz assumed was Buffy's mother. Liz knew that her mom was dead but she had never seen what she looked like. Spike stopped and noticed what she was looking at it. 

"No point in dwelling on things you can't change," he said quietly. 

Liz was startled at how gentle his voice sounded. He put his hand out to her. Liz wasn't sure why, maybe she trusted the sincerity in his eyes, maybe because she wasn't convinced that anything happening to her was real, or maybe it was an automatic response of Buffy's body, but she took it. 

******

"Buffy?" Max repeated. 

"Uh, yeah," she replied. "How did you know?"

"When we—" he blushed to the roots of his hair. Buffy felt a bit embarrassed about it herself. She nodded for him to continue. "I have a connection with Liz and when we—she and I—kiss we can see inside one another's souls. Usually there are images of Liz's childhood or her fantasies---" He stopped and took a deep breath. "With you I saw vampires and your friends and—well, stuff only you would know."

"Wow," Buffy said, trying to understand. "I guess that's why I took a space ride."

"You could see things when we—"

"Yeah."

"How is that possible?" he mumbled, and then he suddenly realized he was missing the big picture. "Buffy, how is any of this possible? Where is Liz?"

"I don't know," Buffy said, pacing the room. "I went to bed as Buffy Summers and I woke up just a few minutes ago as Liz Parker." 

"So it stands to reason that Liz woke up as you."

******

Dawn had almost fallen back to sleep when the phone rang. Groaning, she rolled over and picked up the receiver. 

"Hello?"

"Dawn?"

"Yes?"

"What are you doing up? It's the middle of the night? Don't you have a history test tomorrow?"

Dawn stared at the phone. If it wasn't a strange voice she would swear that it was Buffy.

"Who is this?" she asked. 

She heard some muffled noise and then a male voice came on. 

"Hi, Dawn, this is Max Evans, a friend of Buffy's. I know it's late but can I talk to her? It's really important." 

"Max—alien Max?"

There was a pause, then a nervous chuckle.

"Your sister said that you had a great imagination," Max said, glaring at Buffy. "I'm just plain, Max Evans, of Roswell, New Mexico." Buffy realized what Dawn must have said and bit her lip. 

"Oh," Dawn replied. "Rrright." 

Max sighed. "Is Buffy there?"

"No, you just missed her. She went out slaying with Spike. Something about a monster."

"She went where? To do _what_?"

******

Liz looked around the dank, ominous crypt that she found herself in. She wasn't sure if she should be relieved or really, really worried. She was glad that Spike hadn't found some monster that he thought she could kill. She didn't think he would buy she was Buffy if she was confronted by a monster and she went screaming into the night. And, Liz realized, she had to keep him convinced that she was Buffy. If he continued to believe she was the Slayer then she probably wasn't in any danger from him. She hoped. 

But that was only her most immediate problem. She still had no idea why or how she ended up in Buffy's body, where her own body was, or where Buffy was. She was finally in a place, mentally, where she could think of these things and her mind was racing. First and foremost, she decided, she had to get away from Spike. 

He had disappeared into a trap door in the floor only a moment before. So Liz carefully started backing away toward the exit. The moment she took her eyes off the trap door to make a dash outside, however, she heard his voice behind her. 

"Going somewhere love?"

Liz let out a yelp and turned back. 

"Love?!" she cried before she could stop herself. 

"What's the matter? No one else here but us. No one to discover your dirty little secret."

__

Oh God, no.

She shook her head. 

"You can keep it from Dawn and your loyal Scooby gang, but don't pretend with me. I'm the one person you can't hide from."

Liz turned her back on him and made a mad dash for the exit. She was in far greater danger then even she realized. But Spike grabbed her from behind and pulled her against him. 

"I know what you want," he whispered. 

"Oh I sincerely doubt it," Liz stammered. But then he did something so unexpected her jaw just about hit the floor. 

He leaned in close to her and very quietly, almost like a prayer, began to sing in her ear. " I follow you like a man possessed. There's a traitor here, beneath my breast and it hurts me more then you've ever guessed. If my heart could beat, it would break my chest…."

__

This is a dream. A strange, unfathomable, hideously realistic dream.

But even as she thought the words her body traitorously disagreed. The skin on her arms that he was touching spiked with goosebumps. She could feel his breath on her ear and it set parts of her body tingling that had never tingled before. When she felt his lips on her neck a cry escaped her throat. He turned her around and suddenly his mouth was on hers.

******

"She went with Spike?" Buffy whispered, sinking down onto the bed. 

"To slay something!" Max cried. "Liz doesn't have your abilities, what if she gets hurt? What if—"

"If she's in my body then she probably does have my abilities," she said, hollowly. "My body…"

"Dawn said it was a monster," Max said, getting frustrated with Buffy's sudden distraction. 

"They didn't go to slay anything," she said flatly. 

"How do you know?"

"I just do," she said. 

"Then—"

"Lizzie?"

Buffy jumped up. 

"Who is that?"

Max went three shades of pale. 

"Liz's dad."

******

Spike pressed Liz against the wall, still kissing her violently. Deliciously. She felt his hands pulling her t-shirt up and she knew she had to tell him to stop. She had to get away from him. She had to think of Max and not the cries of her body—Buffy's body. It was Buffy's reaction, not her own, she told herself. Yeah, that was it. Then why couldn't she get the word "stop" out of her mouth?

Then Spike's grip tightened on her arms. Suddenly he was bruising her and she yelped out in pain. He pushed her and slammed her against the wall so hard that the walls shook. He pulled just far enough away from her so that only their breath separated them. 

"Who the hell are you?" he growled. "And what have you done to Buffy?"


End file.
